


Captain's Duties

by Fanforthefics (StormDancer)



Series: Hockey Tumblr Oneshots [15]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Growing Up Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-08
Updated: 2018-07-08
Packaged: 2019-06-07 11:44:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15218438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormDancer/pseuds/Fanforthefics
Summary: “I don’t hate you,” Crosby says. They’re sitting, waiting for camera people to come their way. They’re so young; they think they’re old then, but they are young compared to what they will be. Alex turns to look at him, this boy who everyone says is the best there is–who’s better than Alex. He just looks like a boy.





	Captain's Duties

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: things you said with too many miles between us. 
> 
> Unbetaed and basically unedited. Don't know anything about anyone, these aren't real people, don't own rights to anything, etc etc. Enjoy!

“I don’t hate you,” Crosby says. They’re sitting, waiting for camera people to come their way. They’re so young; they think they’re old then, but they are young compared to what they will be. Alex turns to look at him, this boy who everyone says is the best there is–who’s better than Alex. He just looks like a boy.

“Good?” Alex says. 

Crosby turns to look at him. He looks like a boy, but he looks tired, too, like some of mama’s friends look tired. “They’re going to want us to hate each other,” he says, matter of fact. “You can hate me if you want. But I wanted you to know, I don’t hate you. Even if they want me to.”  

Alex snorts. “Who cares what they want?” he asks. He’s so very young. “I’ll do what I want. And I want to win.”

Crosby smiles, and it’s a boy’s smile and it’s a tiger’s smile. “So do I.”

“Then one of us wins,” Alex tells him, like speaking it will make it so.  “And then they’ll stop asking.”

Crosby shakes his head. He looks at Alex like he’s being silly. “They’ll never stop asking,” he says, and then they’re called in.

///

Five years later, and Alex isn’t young anymore. His bones don’t ache, not yet, but he knows they will. But the Las Vegas heat is dry and far away from the humid heat of Washington and a whole world away from Russia, and Alex has decided that today, he is young.

“Zhenya!” he declares, throwing his arm around him when he finds him near the bar. His friendship with Zhenya is not, perhaps, the most steady thing in his life, but today he is a little drunk and he has decided to be happy. “What are you drinking?” 

Zhenya toasts him with his drink. Alex tries not to look at the ring on his finger, but it’s not easy. “I’m drinking less than you, I think.” 

“Yes, that is a problem,” Alex agrees, and then turns to the man next to Zhenya, who’s watching them not so patiently to be done talking in Russian. “Crosby!” 

“Ovechkin,” Sidney nods. The ring on his finger is harder to look at, for any number of reasons. But he’s smiling, and clearly looser than usual. Alex would be too, if he’d cleaned up like Sidney had today. 

“Congratulations,” Alex tells him, because that’s what you do. He’s not sure he means it. But he says it. 

Sidney grins. It’s a looser grin than Alex has ever seen, because Sidney is never relaxed–he’s either on the ice, which is it’s own thing, or he’s off it and he’s so worried about being the face of the league or whatever he’s worried about that he’s uptight. Alex doesn’t get it; he understands the cameras, but it’s easy enough to ignore them. Zhenya claims that when Sid’s on his own, with just the team, he’s different, but Alex has never seen it. Maybe this is a bit of it. It looks good on him. 

“Thanks,” he says. “You had a good season.” 

“Not good enough.”

“Never is,” Sidney agrees. He leans back against the bar. It makes his shoulders look massive. Alex is bigger than him on basically every metric, but Sidney has never seemed like it mattered to him. Definitely not on the ice, and not here, as he eyes Alex. “Want a drink?” 

“All drinks are free.” 

“Want two?” 

Alex laughs. Zhenya chuckles and shoves at Sidney. Sidney just grins, and gets the drinks.

Alex goes with the flow, and somehow the flow ends up in Zhenya’s hotel room. Sidney had claimed one bed when they’d come in, and he’s the smallest person in the room–or the shortest, at least–but somehow he gets a full bed, and Alex and Zhenya are sprawled on the other, their feet hanging off the side. Alex feels like he should object, but he’s drunk and they’re still passing a bottle of whiskey between them and he can’t look away from the ring on Sidney’s finger, where it’s resting spread on Sidney’s thigh. 

“What does it feel like?” he asks, interrupting Sidney and Zhenya’s talk about their teammates’ weddings. 

“Hm?” Zhenya asks, but Sidney lifts his head, meets Alex’s eyes, and even as Alex clarifies he doesn’t think he has to. 

“Winning. Lifting it.” He chuckles. “Want to know how I’m going to feel, next year.” 

“How you know we’ll feel again,” Zhenya retorts in Russian, and Alex shoves at him. Sidney rolls his eyes, even though Alex is like, 98% certain he didn’t understand them. He looks like a slightly amused father, as Zhenya pushes back at Alex. Like he’s above all this. So boring. It makes Alex want to yell and shake him and check him into the boards until he breaks, just to see if he can. 

“Maybe don’t break the bed?” Sidney says, mild, but with the hint of command that has Zhenya, and Alex despite himself, settling back down. “That’s not something I particularly want being written abuot us.” 

“No? No wild parties for Sidney Crosby?” Alex retorts. “Hockey orgies are best orgies.” 

"Not my kind of headline,” Sidney replies. Then adds, cocking his head. “And how do you even know the English for ‘orgies’?” 

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Alex retorts, waggling his eyebrows and leering. Zhenya elbows him again. Sidney laughs, loud and always surprising, so unlike the perfect Sidney Crosby. He look different when he’s smiling like that. 

Alex shakes his head. “How does it feel?” he asks again. 

“Like best sex. Better.” Zhenya groans in a way that makes Alex mildly uncomfortable. “Like I could fly. Like…” he trails off, dreamy. 

“You need to get laid,” Alex tells him in Russian. 

Zhenya smirks. “The ring helps with that too,” he retorts, and Alex really doesn’t have a choice but to push him off the bed. Zhenya grabs his wrist and he goes over too with a thump, like they’re boys again. Like everything is still easy and simple. 

Sidney’s still lying on the bed when we’re done, watching them with a slightly bemused, considering look. He was probably never like this, Alex thinks. He remembers Sidney as a boy, remembers the pictures of him, all buttoned up and serious. Even then, Alex had wanted to break that.  

“Whiskey, Sid?” Zhenya whines, and Sidney lifts up the bottle–empty. Zhenya makes a sound like someone killed his cat. “Sid!” he whines. 

“If you hadn’t been roughhousing, you could have been drinking,” Sidney replies, all prim except for the giggles sneaking out at the corners. Zhenya scowls at him, and drags himself to his feet. 

“Fine. I get more,” he announces, and slams his way out of the room. 

Sidney watches him go, his brows furrowed. “He’s going to get into trouble,” he decides, sighing. He doesn’t move. 

“Zhenya can take care of himself,” Alex tells him. He’s not entirely sure of that, but he is also pretty drunk and doesn’t feel like moving, so he figures it’ll be okay. 

He drags himself up, but somehow he’s managed to tumble closer to Sidney’s bed, so he pulls himself onto that instead. Sidney doesn’t really move, but the bed’s big enough for two. “So,” he asks. “What does it feel like?” 

Sidney looks at the ring. “Winning was the best feeling in the world.” 

Alex’s English might not be entirely fluent, but he knows tenses. “Was?”

Sidney lifts his eyes. In the soft hotel light, they shine like gold. “It gets heavy,” he says, and he’s looking at Alex like he expects him to understand. 

Alex dreams about winning. He dreams about the cup, about the gold. He is still so young. “Think you strong enough to handle a ring,” he tells Sidney, who shakes his head. He looks–disappointed. Like Alex disappointed him. 

Alex doesn’t care what Sidney Crosby thinks of him. But– “And is good, right? Like Zhenya says. Gets you laid.” 

Sidney hums, and tilts his head again. “It could,” he agrees, slowly. Alex watches, suddenly wary. People underestimate Sidney Crosby at their peril. He shifts, sitting up. His shirt’s all rucked up from where he was lying on the bed, and it’s tight across his shoulders and somehow also showing a hint of his hipbone. He’s started to put on his summer muscle. 

“Ovi,” Sidney says suddenly. He’s closer. Alex refuses to blush. He won’t be made to blush by Sidney. 

Except then–Sidney’s leaned in and his lips are on Alex’s and Alex freezes. His lips are chapped but just as plush and full as they’ve always looked. As Alex has wondered if they are. 

Then he collects himself, and shoves at Sidney, hard. “What you doing!” he demands, and glances at the door. It’s still closed. Sidney’s fallen back. He looks–disappointed, again, but his back is up and he has the look that he gets when he’s going to start whining at a ref. 

“I thought–maybe.” 

“No!” Alex snaps. He resists the urge to wipe at his mouth. To touch his lips. “No, I’m hockey player, I’m not–” 

“Okay. You aren’t.” Sidney shrugs. "Sorry.” 

“Sorry!” Alex repeats. he’s getting loud. “Sidney, is so–what if I punch you? Not sure I won’t! What if I–” 

Sidney straightens. “You couldn’t, though. If you say anything, and I deny it, it’s just you being shitty. Nothing people say to me on the ice is going to be different than it is now.” He fixes Alex with that look, the look that makes him remember that Sidney Crosby is boring and overrated and very very good. 

“You do this a lot? Kiss hockey players?” 

“Sometimes.” 

“And it works?” 

“Sometimes.” Sidney doesn’t look away. “You haven’t heard anything, have you?”

“No.” Alex shakes his head again. He’s too drunk for this. He hates this. He’s not stupid, but his mind doesn’t work like this, all twisty and planning. Nicke’s the playmaker, not him. “But you’re…Sidney Crosby.”

Sidney raises his eyebrows. His fingers drum over the ring. His eyes are gold and his lips are pink and his hair is curling just a bit over his forehead and Alex has seen him across faceoff dots and next to him on a camera and sitting on that bench, when he thought everything would be easy. “And you’re Alexander Ovechkin,” he replies, and Alex’s chest puffs out reflexively. Damn right he is. “That’s almost as good.” 

“Is better,” Alex retorts, and grabs the nearest pillow to hit Sidney with. Sidney laughs suddenly, surprised, and when Zhenya comes back they’re settled back down. There’s no evidence that Sidney ever kissed him. that Sidney ever suggested–that he would. 

///

Almost ten years after that, and the phone is ringing, ringing. Alex paces the alley behind the bar as he waits. The bass from inside pounds through his bones, and and he can feel the heat and sweat of it even the summer Moscow air. Outside, though, it’s bearable. He thumbs at the band of the ring on his finger, and waits. 

Finally, “Hello?” Sid answers. 

“Sid!” Alex cries. Maybe too happily. Maybe too much. He doesn’t know anymore. He is less drunk than he should be. “You come to Europe, not come to Russia? Not see best country?” 

“I’ve been to Russia before,” Sid points out, sounding amused and a little exasperated, which is about where Alex goes for with Sid. 

“That doesn’t count,” Alex argues. He doesn’t like to think about the last time Sid was in Russia. 

“That’s what Geno said too. Then he said if I came to Russia when he wasn’t there, he was going to mutiny.” 

Alex snorts. The days Evgeni Malkin mutinies from Sidney Crosby is the day pigs fly. “Fine then. You leave Pens, come play for us. You be so good, third line center.” 

“Third line?” That really gets him offended. Alex grins at the bricks. 

“Kuzy and Backy always my favorites,” he informs Sid, who makes a deeply unimpressed noise. 

“This is why I’m not coming to Russia.” 

“I can take Zhenya.” 

Another scoff. This one Alex scowls at. He can definitely take Zhenya. “I–” 

“Why are you calling?” Sidney interrupts. “It’s late for you.” 

Alex lets out a long breath, and tilts his head back against the brick. It is late. Alex is not as drunk as he wanted to be. There are so many people in the club, and they’re oohing at his ring and asking–

“Does it get lighter?” he asks. Apropos of nothing, like why he’s calling Sidney Crosby halfway across the earth about a conversation they had nearly a decade ago. 

Sid’s breath is loud, over the phone. “No,” he says, and he sounds kind. Not even condescending. Just–acknowledging something they both know. They both have always known, even if Alex tried to pretend there was an end date to this, that winning would make it stop. “Or at least, nothing I’ve done has gotten it to stop. Maybe we should be asking Mario.” 

“It’s–I was so happy, when I lift it.” Alex isn’t sure he’s ever been so happy. The Cup, and then passing it to Nicke and Nicke’s half-astonished grin, and then the rest of the boys, and then the week of celebration, and Alex had felt like floating away, like nothing could touch him ever again. 

“And then.”

“And then,” Alex seconds. Cameras and interviews and fans and everyone, and when’s the next one coming and do you think you can do it again and what next? "And everyone else—they still so…” 

“They don’t have to carry it,” Sid finishes. Alex doesn’t have to see him to know what Sidney Crosby looks like, settling into captain mode. 

“Yes,” Alex confirms. This, he thinks, is why he called. Because Sid’s always had to carry it too. Since they were just boys, and the cameras told them that it was up to the two of them to save hockey. “They never stop asking.” 

“Try being up for a threepeat,” Sid replies with a sigh, and Alex–god, despite himself, he  _dreams_. Another cup. Three. Finally getting to throw it in Sid’s face, that he’d done something he couldn’t. Being able to throw it in everyone’s face, that yes it took eleven years but he did it. 

“I will,” he says instead of that, and gets a chuckle. 

A door bangs open. “Sasha!” come the call. “Come inside! What are you doing out here?” 

“I’ll be right in,” Alex tells him. 

“You have to go?”

“Have you finally learned Russian?”

“I know what being summoned into a party sounds like in any language.” Sid pauses, then adds, “Especially Russian.” 

Alex tsks. “Zhenya put up with so much from you.” 

“Do you want me to tell you about me and Backstrom’s chat thread?” 

“You bad liar!” Alex yells, but makes a note to text Nicke later. He’s pretty sure that Backy and Sid aren’t friends. Mostly. But just in case. 

Sid chuckles, and for a second, Alex thinks–of being back in that hotel room, of Sid’s lips. It’s been ten years, and Sid’s never mentioned it. Alex’s never mentioned it. He doesn’t think about it, except for sometimes when there’s a picture of Sid with a man, talking and laughing and he wonders if they’re just that bit too close. Except for when his gaze wanders and he yanks it back. Except for the times he’s facing Sid across a scrum and Sid’s eyes are bright and fierce and focused. Except for that last game, when their helmets had hit and Sid stared at him like he was trying not to cry and like he could see into Alex’s soul, and then he’d just nodded, and Alex knew what he meant. 

But Sid must still be doing it. Must still be quietly, carefully, picking up men. Boring, bland Sidney Crosby, the lamest face of the league. The man who’s never not done what the league asked. Who Alex has lived his professional life compared to, the wild card against Crosby’s steadiness. 

“Think they ever stop?” Alex asks, and hears Sid’s sigh, half a world away. 

“No,” he says. “They’ll never stop asking,” he says. Then he pauses. Takes another breath. “But only about what they know.” 

Sid, and his little rebellions. The little things that aren’t anyone else’s.  _I don’t hate you_ , he’d said, back when they were young. Alex hadn’t realized that had been a line in the sand. 

“And what they don’t know?” he asks. Pushes. There are so many people inside the club who want things from him. Who want him to be someone. And one man in…wherever he is, who gets it. 

“That’s mine.” 

Alex looks at the brick. Looks at his hand, and the ring around it. “And if I want to know?” he demands. 

For a second, Sid’s silent. Figuring out his play, probably. Then, “Then I’ll see you when the season starts, eh?” he says, and Alex’s heart starts to beat double time as he hangs up, goes back inside. He feels old, every bit of him the playoffs stole aching still, but maybe that’s not a bad thing.  

**Author's Note:**

> Liked it? Want to talk about it? Comment or come chat on [ tumblr!](http://fanforthefics.tumblr.com/)


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